Automated and automatic assembly machinery has acquired a substantial and growing place in modern manufacturing processes. Helical or coil springs are components of many automatically assembled devices, and feeding these springs, one-by-one, from a randomly entwined bulk of such springs to automatic assembly apparatus has been a problem of long standing. In the past additional hand labor has been required to manually disentangle the springs and feed them into automatic assembly machinery, thus detracting from the economic advantage such automatic machinery is intended to produce.
The apparatus of the present invention automatically separates entwined or entangled springs by impacting them in a closed chamber with the separated springs moving through a properly placed discharge opening and through a slow-down chute to the hopper or feed apparatus of automatic assembly machinery.